Kinda tongue-in-cheek questions, but: Honey isn’t an animal body part, it isn’t produced by animal bodies, so if it is an animal product because bees process it, is wheat flour (for example) an animal product because humans process it? How about hand-kneaded bread? Does that make fruit an animal product because the bees pollinated the flowers while collecting the nectar?
Bees make honey for their hive. Honey also does indeed contain bodily fluids from the bees.
The bread making human consents to you taking the bread (presumably). Breast milk and other human bodily fluids can be vegan for the same reason.
And insects pollinate plants not because they use the fruit, but for the nectar. They don’t care what happens after they leave the flower.
I didn’t want to go into it in the original comment, but yes. It is a relevant debate whether it’s vegan to swallow another humans semen, or even saliva. And yes, it is, if the human consents. Consent is the more or less the basis of whether vegans find it moral to consume something. Humans can give consent to sharing their fluids. Other animals cannot.
I’ve always found it interesting that using animals is a bad thing, but using plants in similar ways is fine. I guess there has to be a line somewhere, otherwise such a person would simply starve to death.
Animals aren’t just used, they are tortured on a industrial scale. That’s mainly why vegans oppose animal products.
One good argument for this: A vegan diet not only minimizes animal deaths but plant deaths as well, since livestock obviously has to be fed on many, many individual plants before they can get slaughtered. So even if we for some reason prioritized saving the lives of plants going vegan would still be the way to go.
I respect this argument. I would like to know how Humans fit into the ecosystem.
Humans tend to remove predators from population centers to prevent Humans from becoming prey. The culling of predators allow more prey animals to survive. Humans find themselves competing with prey animals for fruits and vegetables. Humans hunt prey animals to increase yields of fruits and vegetables.
How do we reconcile that our population centers are built on the culling of predator and prey species?
How do Humans balance protection and food production with the morality of minimizing animal and plant death?
What should Humans do with the bodies of culled predators and prey?
There are varieties of Jainism that won’t pluck fruits (will only eat what has naturally fallen) and many mainstream varieties of Jainism that won’t eat any root vegetables (because digging them up would harm insects), or seeded vegetables (eating it harms the plants ability to reproduce).
Naturally fallen fruit has ground bugs enjoying them like slugs. If a slug is already enjoying the fruit, that would violate Jainism?
It is really tricky to genuinely discuss this topic. Many omnivores use this as a straw man argument to discredit vegans for not being fully consequential. On top of that, reasons for being vegan and where people draw the line also vary hugely.
Anyways, I would argue that eating plants and also fungi is very different to eating animal products. First of all, if you are vegan for ethical reasons (as I am) then usually the argument is that one can infer from one’s own feelings onto other animals. Sure, this isn’t always that easy and we will never know how other animals really feel. This includes fellow humans btw. But it is certainly very definitive that many animals feel pain, discomfort and many other emotions not unlike we feel them.
Plants and fungi on the other hand have completely different body plans. Plants are modular organisms and you simply cannot relate cutting your arm off with cutting a branch. We may deepen our understanding on plants and maybe we will find some form of conscience one day. But this is still far off and for now we can only speculate. Fungi are very different as well and we usually just eat their fruiting bodies anyways.
Secondly, as someone else pointed out, for ecological reasons and for the sheer quantity that is necessary to sustain humans, going vegan is always the better choice. Animals live on plants, too, and just use a lot of the plants’ energy on their own metabolism.
Think about it as if its about consent. The bees don’t consent to their honey being taken. Cows don’t consent to be repeatedly impregnated and milked. Pigs don’t consent to their butts becoming bacon. Chickens don’t consent to their eggs being taken.
However, the miller and the baker both consented to milling/kneading, and later selling their wares.
Human breast milk can be vegan, though, if given freely. If you forcefully take human breast milk, then it is no longer vegan.
Technically, yes.
Assuming the canabee is consenting freely, and likely has to be done in a way not violating other laws. Like some variety of a pain kink where people slice of small portions of each others meaty bits and eat them. That’s probably a thing, though likely not very popular among vegans.
Well basically yes, tho would need to get into the topic of exploitation and all that if we are talking about if something is viewed as acceptable to consume.
Beekeeping is exploitation, but don’t the bees benefit from it too vs. being in the wild?
Is it exploitation? I’d argue slave or prison labor is exploitation because the workers have no freedom of choice. Bees are free to leave, and the queen will in fact do so if not content with the conditions in the hive. If the queen leaves, all of the bees will swarm with her and you’d be left with an empty box.
Beekeeping strikes me more as symbiosis. The beekeeper provides ideal conditions, far better than the average location that would be found in the wild, and can help protect the hive against threats like mites. In exchange the beekeeper receives a share of the honey produced by the hive.
No beekeeper takes all of the honey from the hive. Only the top box (the “honey super”) of a typical hive stack is harvested. A grate below the top box (a “queen excluder”) prevents the queen from entering it so no larva are laid in the top box. The workers bee are smaller and can pass through the grate to build out comb and produce honey. The comb and honey in the bottom boxes are left to the hive to feed its workers and produce the next generation of bees, ensuring the survival of the hive.
A queen excluder cannot be used to prevent swarming long-term as the drones that gather the pollen also won’t for through the grate! An excluder might be used to delay swarming and buy time so the beekeeper can offer another solution, like adding more boxes to the hive or splitting it into two hives. Better beekeepers proactively manage their hives, e.g. by setting up an empty hive in advance to essentially offer a swarming hive a new ideal home whenever they’re ready for it.
